LGBTQ rights leader slams NYC Mayor Adams’ top adviser for appearing with anti-gay preacher
One of Mayor Adams’ top advisers is catching heat from a prominent gay rights activist after being caught on camera rubbing shoulders with Ruben Diaz Sr., a pastor and former lawmaker considered persona non grata in LGBTQ circles.
Ingrid Lewis-Martin, a chaplain and longtime friend of the mayor’s who also serves as his chief adviser, drew the rebuke of LGBTQ rights leader Allen Roskoff for recently attending an event held by Diaz Sr., a former City Council member and state senator whose views about the LGBTQ community have sparked outrage in the past.
Photos posted on Twitter and Facebook show Lewis-Martin and Diaz Sr. standing side-by-side during the Feb. 23 confab — a pairing that Roskoff said only adds to the slight against gays.
“There are two people I would never take a picture with: David Duke and Ruben Diaz Sr.,” said Roskoff, who co-wrote the nation’s first gay rights bill. “Chaplain Ingrid Lewis-Martin seems to have no problem embracing homophobic people. I can’t think of a prior administration that would have permitted this to happen.”
The attack against Lewis-Martin, who was ordained as a chaplain a few years ago, comes just days after she and Mayor Adams weathered criticism for dismissing the First Amendment guarantee of the separation of church and state, with Lewis-Martin saying last week she “does not believe” the two must be separate.
Diaz Sr., who now heads the New Hispanic Clergy Organization, has a long history of making remarks that LGBTQ leaders find problematic. In 2019, he said the City Council was “controlled by the homosexual community.” Then he refused to apologize and doubled down, saying his words weren’t “homophobic,” but simply the “truth.”
At the time, former Mayor Bill de Blasio and former Council Speaker Corey Johnson called on Diaz Sr. to resign for what he said.
As a state senator, Diaz Sr. also voted against what eventually became the New York State law allowing same-sex marriage. In 1994, community leaders called for him to be removed from the Civilian Complaint Review Board after mocking then-City Councilman Tom Duane, who’s gay, and for suggesting that the Gay Games, which were held in New York City that year, would further the spread of AIDS.
“Some of the gay and lesbian athletes are likely to be already infected with AIDS or can return home with the virus,” Diaz Sr. wrote in a Spanish-language column.
Roskoff pointed to all of it as ample reason for people in the Adams administration to avoid the Bronx preacher.
“He’s been absolutely, consistently anti-gay,” Roskoff said. “He has just used the gay community as fodder to rile up the right wing. He’s also anti-choice. And he also endorses some of the worst Republican scum that runs for office.”
Diaz Sr. described the attacks against him as discrimination and said the meeting was focused on finding ways the city and religious leaders could work together to help the thousands of migrants who have been streaming into the city over the last year.
“Why shouldn’t they meet with us? They’re asking the mayor to discriminate. You cannot do that,” he said. “They are asking the mayor to reject the help? I don’t believe that.”
Fabien Levy, a spokesman for the mayor, said the Adams administration “will show, through our actions and deeds, that we are committed to serving all New Yorkers equally and fairly, regardless of who they love or how they identify.”
“If we want to make progress, we have to be willing to meet people where they are and take them where we want them to be,” Levy said.
Roskoff’s broadside against Lewis-Martin isn’t the first run-in Team Adams has had with gay rights proponents.
The administration took heat a year ago after Adams announced the appointment of Rev. Erick Salgado as an assistant commissioner in the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs. Salgado ran a failed 2013 campaign for mayor on a platform that included anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage positions.
Frustration over that appointment was further compounded when the mayor hired former Councilman Fernando Cabrera as a top faith adviser. In 2014, Cabrera, a Christian pastor who Adams was initially considering for the city’s top mental health post, praised the Ugandan government’s ban on same-sex marriage while on a trip to the country.
An hour before Adams announced he was tapping Cabrera for the faith adviser job, the former lawmaker apologized for his past remarks on Facebook — an apology that appears to have been removed since then.
Adams also backed the state senate campaign of Conrad Tillard, who in 2005 said that, while he’s “not against gay people,” he also did not support same-sex marriage.
But Adams has also made positive overtures to the LGBTQ community.
He launched pro-LGBTQ ads in Florida in response to that state’s “Don’t Say Gay” law and has publicly supported Drag Queen Story Hour in the face of criticisms from the right.
Last June, he announced nearly $7 million in city funding for programs aimed at supporting the cause of the LGBTQ community. During that announcement, he conceded that “we won’t always get it right,” but added “we will always do right by sitting down and learning.”
Roskoff praised that policy move in June, saying it would “save lives.”